TweakTown News Posts - Page 2148

Naughty Dog's PlayStation 3-exclusive 'The Last of Us' is shaping up very nicely, and there's something to get excited for: the latest trailer for the game. The new trailer doesn't show any in-game footage, but rather a cinematic.

The cinematic is quite powerful, with the leads Ellie and Joel driving in a car, when they stumble across what they think is an enemy. The enemy quickly reacts, and it turns out its an ambush. They get shot at, a brick thrown at them, and finally, they push an old run-down bus at them and they crash. These are the situations the game will put you in, and I'm quite excited at the possibilities.

The graphics are top-notch, and should be pretty close to the in-game graphics, as Naughty Dog uses the in-game engine to display cinematics, ala the Uncharted series. The game is a PlayStation 3-exclusive, so PC's won't be getting The Last of Us anytime, well, ever. But you'll want to check out the trailer to this, for sure.

Well, this came out of nowhere, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is about to cause quite a stir with carriers across the United States with their new plans. The report says that the latest move from Google, where they've offered their Galaxy Nexus for $399 unlocked is only the beginning of a new initiative.

The new plans will most likely be unfolded at Google I/O, where they're planning to partner up with a bunch of OEMs in roder to have up to five Pure Google devices available, all at once. All five of the devies will sport Google's next-generation Android 5.0 "Jelly Bean" operating system and will be sold directly from Google in unlocked form to end users in America, Europe and Asia. Wow.

This is huge, as it means you'll be able to buy a top-of-the-line Nexus handset directly from Google, and throw it onto a plan, only use it on Wi-Fi, or go pre-paid. Google is said to hoping to have the new Jelly Bean-powered devices on sale before Thanksgiving, right before the Black Friday and holiday sales. This would be perfect, and would combat Apple's next-gen iPhone quite well. The mobile space sure is getting interesting!

US Customs have stepped in and stopped some of the shipments of HTC's One X and EVO 4G LTE smartphones as a result of an earlier ITC order won by Apple. The ordeal is over a patent lawsuit for "data tapping" (context-sensitive text-based actions) in the browser and messaging apps on some HTC phones.

HTC have said that these features have been removed from the One X and EVO 4G LTE, where HTC are "confident" that it is in compliance with the ruling:

The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order. We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval. The HTC One X and HTC Evo 4G LTE have been received enthusiastically by customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.

The ITC order was quite broad meaning it allowed US Customs to seize any HTC handset imported into the United States purely on the suspicion it might violate Apple's asserted intellectual property rights. Let's hope it's all sorted out soon enough.

Have you ever had sensitive data that you didn't want to get into the wrong hands? Always marveled over those evil villain's bases which self-destruct? Well, RunCore has brought to market an SSD that self-destructs on command to permanently erase your data. You get the speed of an SSD with the cool features of an evil villain's lair.

In the video above, you can see an explanation of how the self-destruct function works along with the actual self-destruction happening. After the button is pressed, a puff of smoke comes out of the SSD due to how the self-destruction works. The NAND chips are over-volted so that they are physically destroyed.

A less subtle method is the physical destruction of your SSD by applying an over-current to the NAND flash memory and thereby physically destroying these. The RunCore InVincible product series is catering to embedded computer systems requiring high-speed serial switched fabric interconnects for rugged design implementation and more flexible power ranges. Delivering optimized storage options particularly in mission-critical fields such aerospace, defense and general industrial applications.

So next time the FBI comes knocking on your door, wouldn't you like to have one of these running in your PC? Well, actually, I have nothing to hide, but it sure is a cool gimmick. Unfortunately, you can only use it once.

Some would be criminals have been apprehended thanks to the fact that they forgot to log out of Facebook. It seems as though Facebook has become so intertwined with life that people just plain forget to log out sometimes. Two men now stand accused of robbing an Internet cafe after using their services to check out the latest hap's on the social network.

After they finished stalking the profiles of their friends, they decided it might be fun to rob the place. As such, they then decided to make like they were going to pay, but instead allegedly attacked the shop owner. After robbing the place, they hopped onto a motorcycle that also happened to not belong to them.

The police, when they arrived, happened to notice that one of the criminals had remained logged in on Facebook. This led to the arrest of the one person, who I'm sure proceeded to squeal on the other. This isn't the first time would-be criminals have been caught thanks to Facebook. Previously, in 2009, a house robber became so comfortable in the house that he logged onto Facebook and forgot to log off before leaving.

You know those augmented reality glasses being developed by Google that everyone is going crazy over? Well, Google was just granted three patents covering the technology behind them. Google isn't the only one working on the technology, but they are the only ones to have gained patents for it which should give them a leg up on the competition.

The patent numbers, in case you should want to look them up, are D659,739, D659,740 and D659,741. They are for a "wearable display device" and a "wearable display device frame." The device first made an appearance in an online video last month and made its rounds around the internet, including here on TweakTown.

The patents were filed October 26, 2011, which shows that the technology has been development for some time. What's more is that they are being tested by Google executives which shows the support for the project is coming from the top. With that support, it is all the more likely that these will eventually hit store shelves.

In the latest news about Facebook's imminent IPO is that they have increased the opening amount of shares by 84 million, which is about 25% more than what was originally planned to be on sale. These new shares, however, won't be coming from the company itself. Rather, the new shares will be on sale by early investors.

The strong demand by investors for stock in the social networking giant has prompted the change in plan. The additional 84 million shares brings the total number of shares up to 421 million that will be on sale when the company goes public on Thursday. It's possible that not even the increased amount of shares will be able to meet demand.

Originally it was expected that the IPO of Facebook would raise somewhere around $10.6 billion, depending on investor interest. With the increase of shares and interest, it is now expected that the IPO could raise $16 billion. Mark Zuckerberg will retain 55.8% of the company, which will give him a small majority.

Verizon has announced plans to expand its LTE 4G service to 28 new cities along with expanding service in 11 cities. This new addition will bring the total tally for 4G coverage up to 258 cities, which covers half of the United States population. This is all part of a plan to bring 4G LTE to 400 cities in 49 states by the end of 2012. The switch will be flipped on May 17.

Reports are coming in from around the world that The Pirate Bay is largely unreachable. No, this isn't due to some country's court order. Instead, according to a TorrentFreak insider, The Pirate Bay is suffering from a DDoS. This DDoS comes at an interesting time as they had recently openly criticized Anonymous for DDoS'ing Virgin Media.

In all likelihood, this is an attack by Anonymous after being criticized. However, it has not been confirmed to be them. At the time of writing, the site has been down for about 24 hours and seems to be unreachable from my end. TorrentFreak's inbox often suffers when The Pirate Bay goes down, but this time seems even worse.

The problem lies in the fact that people were expecting The Pirate Bay to be unreachable due to the censorship rulings, but they were also expecting to use the bypass methods. They weren't expecting those methods to fail. It will be interesting to see if Anonymous claims responsibility for this attack. More as it comes.

Another research firm has confirmed that Samsung is the top cell phone maker in the world. With 86.6 million handsets sold in the first quarter of 2012, Samsung has reclaimed the title from Apple. That 86.6 million sold is 25.9 percent higher than last year's first quarter and helped give Samsung a 20.7% share of the market.

Of the 86.6 million handsets sold last quarter, 38 million of them were smartphones. Samsung's 38 million smartphones account for more than 40% of Android phones in the world. That number is huge considering not a single other handset maker has captured more than 10% of the Android smartphone market.

Nokia was thrown out of the way as Samsung flew past. Nokia, now in second place, sold 83.2 million handsets, a decrease of 22.7% from last year's quarter. "Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level," Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement. "For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9 per cent of overall sales for Samsung as opposed to 16 per cent for Nokia."

Apple came in third with only 7.9% market share. That figure was boosted by iPhone 4S sales, which contributed to increasing Apple's handset sales by 96.2%. RIM is still at the bottom of the heap with only 2.4% market share.